COVID-19 FUNDING INFORMATION FOR COMMUNITY GROUPS

COVID-19 Funder News The Strategic Grants Team - Keeping you updated on the latest news from FundersStay positive grant-seekers!

It is encouraging that many funders are publicising they will accommodate any reasonable changes to support beneficiaries, during this challenging and unprecedented time. Consistent with the recommended social distancing practices, grantors are also changing the nature and timing of any planned face-to-face engagements with donors, grant partners and stakeholders. Meetings are now taking place by telephone or video conferencing.

Many are carrying on with business as usual, remotely. However, like everyone, there may be delays in response time given the sudden changes. To date, we have seen very few grant rounds cancelled or postponed, with the majority of those who are postponing being Gaming related funders, due to downturn in their revenue.The Strategic Grants Team will continue to keep our funder news alert page updated with significant announcements, and to keep all NFPs focussed on continuing as much as possible with best practice grant-seeking, reporting and stewardship processes.For customised Grants Calendars, and up to the minute alerts specific to your funding needs, please get in touch for information on our GEMS.Keep positive! We will get through this!

Are You Delivering Community Services During the COVID-19 L4 lockdown?​

Funded community groups must be contributing towards the provision of essential community-led solutions to support local resilience and community wellbeing in relation to COVID-19

Priority requests are those that support Maori, Pacific, older people, people with disabilities, people with current significant health considerations, migrant communities and people who are rurally isolated.

Give yourself peace of mind and contact your funders early to discuss any concerns you have about not being able to meet your funding obligations. Be upfront about your organisational challenges - changing community needs, cancelled events, reduced project delivery, loss of income, staff changes etc.​Most funders are quickly adapting their funding models to cover this period and the following months ahead.Examples include Wellington Community Trust and Nikau Foundation

If your organisation has received DIA (including Lotteries or COGs) funding and your initiative has been affected due to COVID-19, Community Operations have committed to actively work with you to find the best solution whether that is a time extension, change of purpose, etc.

The 2020 Community Organisation Grants Scheme (COGS) funding round opens on Wednesday 8 April 2020 and closes on Wednesday 20 May 2020.

A State of Emergency was declared in New Zealand on 26 March 2020 and a COVID-19 Alert Level 4 is currently in place and will be reviewed in mid-April. We understand this is a challenging time for whānau, iwi, hapū across Aotearoa. We are also aware there is significant pressure and demand on community organisations who are experiencing sudden changes to services and programmes and are facing challenges accessing information and technology.

As a result the Hāpai Hapori/Community Operations team, in partnership with the National COGS Committee, has made a number of changes for the upcoming 202O COGS funding round. These have been made to respond to community needs and to ensure community organisations are able to access funding easily.

The attached document provides information to community organisations about these (See Document Here)

These changes apply for the 2020 COGS funding round only.Further information is available on the Community Matters website here. All COGS funding requests must align to one or more of the Local Distribution Committee’s priorities for 2020. Information about these can be found here.

Please be aware, you can apply for funding help from MSD even if you are not currently funded by Government.You will need to show the current situation has left your organisation in a bad financial position. For More information contact: community_information@msd.govt.nz

The main message is that we want to reassure you about funding that has already been allocated and funding from 1 July 2020. We want to support organisations in the city, to help them through this.

Grants already paid out or approved already If you have already received a grant but are not able to hold the event or deliver the project,

We won’t be asking for you to return the funds - unless you think that is the best option.

Think about how you might be able to direct the funds to other activities that are aligned with the grant or contribute to our criteria, and when you are ready, contact us to discuss these changes and get approval.

Multi-year funded organisations We can confirm that funding will be available for you from 1 July and we can work out reporting with you on a one to one basis, we appreciate that some stuff hasn’t happened and can work out outcomes. We are reaching out to organisations to find out what they plans are, so will be in contact in the coming weeks if we haven’t been in touch already. My colleagues in Community Services and Felicity and Natasha in the City Arts and Events team will be in touch with you.

Creative Communities Funding Scheme We had our Creative Communities panel due to meet on Monday next week, this fund closed at the end of February- we have been in contact with applicants and are working on having the meeting remotely within a couple of weeks.

Future funding rounds- Arts and Culture and Social and Recreation Funds The social and recreation fund webpage is now live with new prioritieshttps://wellington.govt.nz/services/community-and-culture/funding/council-funds/social-and-recreation-fundFor arts organisations we know that CNZ are rolling out their packages and we will work alongside them, for the Arts and Culture Fund we have added a priority (alongside our existing focus areas) we have changed the closing date to 30 April 2020.The additional priority is:Resilience and recovery of arts and cultural sector impacted by COVID-19 We will give priority to applications that meet one or more of our four focus areas and can; · Support the resilience, sustainability and recovery of organisations in Wellington City · Re-frame and adapt projects, programmes and initiatives in the light of COVID-19 · Develop new works to be presented later or to reach audiences in new ways. For organisations working in the community and social wellbeing sectors we have added and additional priorities for the next funding round now closing on 30 April 2020, our website will be updated over the weekend.The additional priority is:Resilience and recovery of community/social well-being sector impacted by COVID-19 We will give priority to applications that meet one or more of our Social and Recreation Fund focus areas and can; • Support the resilience, sustainability and recovery of organisations in Wellington City • Re-frame and adapt projects, programmes and initiatives in the light of COVID-19 For both we hope to have decision in May, our Grants subcommittee is due to meet on 20 May 2020. We will review this in the coming weeks depending on how things play out.We have added this information to our website for Social well-being and Arts and culture funding links here ARTS and SOCIAL.

Venue Subsidies We have put this on hold for now, given the guidance about events and public gatherings, we will be in contact with applicants to discuss projects, appreciating some have been delayed. Like the other funds we want to support the work you all do.Yell out if you have any questions, best via funding@wcc.govt.nzFor arts and culture; Felicity Birch via felicity.birch@wcc.govt.nzFor social and community organisations; ask me and I can either answer or direct you to the best person.For Council funded community centres; ask Donna Wilson donna.wilson@wcc.govt.nz

For our COVID-19 welfare response we are using this email cd.welfare@wcc.govt.nz which is monitored 0900 to 1600 hours Monday - Friday​

Wellington Community Trust

In response to the challenges Communities are facing due to the COBID-19 Virus, We have simplified our usual funding process for the next 6 months.

Our key focus is to enable those communities most impacted to get funding more quickly and easily. This unprecedented situation is resulting in different and immediate needs for communities in this new environment. We’ve listened to both grant seekers and grantees to help inform us in making these changes to our current funding. This fund will have a strong equity focus, and priority will be given to organisations supporting whānau and community wellbeing, particularly for those most impacted by direct and indirect consequences of COVID-19.

Key Questions & Commitments Q: We’ve received a grant but our event/project/project can no longer go ahead or has to change in some way?

We understand that things are changing rapidly for the organisations we fund, for example, events have been cancelled and community needs are changing. If your organisation has received funding from Wellington Community Trust and your funded initiative cannot go ahead, we won’t be asking for funds to be returned – unless you feel this is the best option. Instead we invite you to reconsider how the funding can best be used to serve our communities in this new environment, and, when you are ready, to have a conversation with us.

Q: I’m not able to complete or will have to change my accountability reporting, what should I do?

We’ll be simplifying our accountability reporting to ask you simply - “How did your work/project/event go?”. There will also be relaxed time frames for reporting – this is low priority right now. So if you have reporting due and need extra time, please feel free to take another two or three months to complete this, and to contact us informally via email.

Q: What about applying for funding now?

We will not be reducing our grant budget for the 2020 – 2021 financial year, despite a challenging investment environment.

We commit to listening, to adapting, and to working together for our communities.

In addition, we have simplified our online grant application process to make it easier to apply for funding. While these times are difficult and unprecedented, we will get through this together.

Q: Will WCT be doing anything specific to support communities to cope with the impact of COVID-19?

We are currently considering this. However we already have in place our Quick Response Fund for initiatives that need a quick decision and $10k or less in funding, our LIFT fund for supporting capability in the not-for-profit sector and our Community Grants. We welcome COVID-19 related applications into all of these funds.

Contacting WCT Currently We invite you to contact us to discuss your current grant or to discuss the current needs in your communities to help inform us as to how we can be adaptive and flexible with our granting process over the coming months. We are of course working from home, so, as we all know that presents a few challenges, but we will do our best to be as responsive as possible. This means that the most reliable way to contact us right now is via email:

Chiara@wct.org.nz / Whetu@wct.org.nz (021365628) - For updates about changes to your work/event/project, discussions abut new applications and suggestions for how WCT can respond to emerging community needs.

Our office number (04 499 7966) is being diverted to a team member – however this won’t be a full-time line, so please email if possible and we will call you back.